Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Bud.tv down the drain

"During an investor conference call yesterday, Chief Executive August Busch IV said Bud.TV will “probably fade.” Data show the number of unique visitors to the site in March dropped 40% to 152,000 from the month earlier, according to comScore. Traffic to the site in April was so low it didn’t meet the threshold for measurability, the tracking service said.

NewTeeVeesters Jackson and Steve had previously issued only slightly premature eulogies for Bud.TV, saying the site was doomed by its age-verification registration process, poor design, and lack of embeds. They differed in their opinions of the site’s videos, with Jackson calling them “forcibly viral by committee” and Steve saying “some of the content is pretty good.”

Karina took a special interest in the original Bud.TV drama Afterworld, which has since changed its distribution strategy to be more around its own site and YouTube.

Bud.TV had debuted with a gigantic write-up in the New York Times Magazine, which called it “the most ambitious and costly effort to date of a marketer creating Web content tailored to its own specifications.” That was less than four months ago."